Getting a Mac ready to lend to someone for a week
· 5 min read
Lending a Mac for a week is the awkward middle case. A guest account is too temporary, because they will want their files to survive a restart. Handing over your own login is too much, because everything you have is in it.
A standard account is the answer and it takes five minutes.
Make them an account
System Settings, Users & Groups, Add Account, and choose Standard.
They get their own home folder, their own browser, their own mail, their own desktop. They cannot see your files, cannot install system-wide software without your password, and cannot change settings that affect you.
Give it a password they choose, or a simple one they can change. Turn off any automatic login so the machine lands at the login screen and they cannot arrive in your account by accident.
Check what is actually reachable
Two things a standard account does not automatically hide.
Anything in /Users/Shared. Both accounts can read it. Move anything private out.
External drives. A connected drive is readable by any logged-in user. If your backup drive lives attached to the machine, unplug it, both for privacy and so their use does not fill it.
Worth a quick look:
ls -la /Users/Shared
Sign things out of the shared surfaces
Your account is protected by its password, and a few things live outside it.
Browsers with a shared profile. If you have a browser that opens without a login, check what it is signed in to.
Anything set to launch at the login window, which is rare and worth confirming.
Messages and mail notifications appear on the lock screen by default, and the lock screen is visible to whoever is holding the machine. System Settings, Notifications, and turn off previews when locked.
That last one is the leak people forget. Their week of use includes seeing every message preview that arrives on your locked screen.
Set the boundaries you actually care about
Optional, and worth a moment’s thought.
If you would rather they could not install anything, standard is already most of the way there. If you would rather they could, tell them to ask you for the password rather than leaving them stuck.
If storage is tight, be explicit about it. A week of someone else’s downloads and a second photo library can fill a drive, and the failure mode is your machine running out of space rather than theirs.
FileVault and the recovery question
If FileVault is on, which it should be, a standard account can unlock the disk at startup once they have logged in for the first time while the machine was already running.
The practical consequence: log in to their account once yourself, or have them do it while you are present and the machine is already up. Otherwise a restart while you are not there leaves them at a login screen their account cannot unlock.
This catches people out and it is easily avoided by testing a restart before you hand it over.
When they give it back
Two minutes.
- Log in to your account.
- System Settings, Users & Groups, select their account, remove it.
- macOS offers to save their home folder as a disk image, delete it, or keep it. Ask them first; a disk image is polite if they have not moved their files off.
- Reconnect your backup drive if you unplugged it.
- Reset any notification settings you changed.
When a guest account is enough
For an afternoon rather than a week, use a guest account instead. No password, nothing persists, everything wiped at logout.
The limitation is exactly that: nothing persists, so a restart loses their work. Fine for someone checking email, wrong for someone working. Guest mode covers it.
Questions
Can they see my files if they are an administrator? An administrator can reach another account’s files by authenticating. That is one of several reasons to make a borrower standard rather than administrator. Standard, admin and guest accounts covers the difference.
Should I sign out of iCloud first? No. Your iCloud is tied to your account, and their account has no access to it. Signing out would disrupt your setup for no gain.
What if they need software installing? Type your password at the prompt when they ask, or install it before you hand it over. Do not give them your account password.
Will their use show up in my Screen Time or usage data? No. Those are per account.